A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare - F Is For Fiction Inspired By Shakespeare

 Today I’ll talk about stories which are inspired by Shakespeare. There are plenty of those, books, films, short stories, probably more than I can handle in a single blog post, so what you see here will be what pops into my head.

Somebody once wrote that Shakespeare created the trope of the scientist and his beautiful daughter in his play The Tempest, and so he did! In fact, there is even a film which makes that clear. It’s Forbidden Planet, a 1956 film inspired by The Tempest, starring Walter Pidgeon as a kind of crazy version of Prospero, Anne Francis as his beautiful daughter Altaira and Leslie Nielson, later to be better known as a comedian, as a sort of Captain Kirk character, before Star Trek. 

On the remote chance you haven’t seen it, a spaceship visits the planet where scientist Dr Morbius(Pidgeon) lives with his daughter and Robbie the Robot. He has been able to do lots of good stuff with the help of a machine left by the now-extinct race who lived there. We do eventually learn why they died out, but I’ll leave that in case you haven’t seen it and want to. 

As long as we are talking about The Tempest, in which Shakespeare’s magician Prospero lives on an island with his beautiful daughter Miranda, an “airy sprite”, Ariel and an ugly creature called Caliban, there is a novel by Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest. 

It is set during the English Civil War, in a world where everything Shakespeare wrote was true, and he is called the Great Historian. As a result, there is not only magic, but the technology is different, as there were, for example, clocks in Ancient Rome. It’s seen from the viewpoint of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the nephew of Charles I, who must take a voyage to Prospero’s island to retrieve his staff and book of magic, to save England from the Roundheads. He also meets Oberon and Titania, who represent the land. A lovely novel, very easy reading!

Aussie children’s writer writer Jackie French has written a series of novels with Shakespearean themes. Here is a link to information about them. https://www.jackiefrench.com/shakespeare-series. My favourite is My Name Is Not Peaseblossom, in which Titania’s fairy Peaseblossom spends some time in our world. He is not what most of us would imagine a fairy to be like! 

The Fool’s Girl by Celia Rees is a YA sequel to Twelfth Night. In it, Viola and Orsino’s daughter, Violetta, heads for London with the clown Feste, in search of a precious relic stolen from her kingdom, Illyria. She meets Shakespeare and hopes he can help. Here is my review of it. https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2016/04/just-finished-reading-fools-girl-by.html

Speaking of Twelfth Night, comedy She’s The Man brings it into the present day. Instead of a shipwreck off the coast of Illyria, Viola, a passionate soccer player, disguises herself as a boy and heads for Illyria High School, a boarding school where her brother Sebastian was supposed to start, when her girls’ team is scrapped by her old school. Sebastian is overseas at the time, making it easier to get away with. She falls in love with teammate “Duke” Orsino. It was very funny and kept many aspects of the Shakespeare play. Not all,  but enough to make it recognisable. 

Ten Things I Hate About You was based on The Taming Of The Shrew, though more sympathetic to Kate. Again, it’s updated and has teen protagonists.

Aussie author John Marsden wrote a novel called Hamlet, a modernised version of the play with a much younger Hamlet. I confess I haven’t read much of it yet. He was best known for his series Tomorrow When The War Began.

And, of course, there is Terry Pratchett’s wonderful Discworld series about the three witches, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and the youngest witch, Magrat Garlick. The first of these is Wyrd Sisters(okay, the second if you count Equal Rites, which is where Granny first appears), more or less the Scottish Play as seen through the eyes of the witches. In the tiny mountain kingdom of Lancre, the king is murdered and the Duke and Duchess usurp the throne. A baby prince is carried away to safety, but the witches rescue him from pursuers and leave him to be raised by actors. The actors are eventually invited to perform a play as propaganda for the Duke. They perform what we know as the Scottish Play. The witches are not impressed…

This novel starts with a shriek of “When shall we three meet again?” answered by “Well, I can do Tuesday.” 

Let’s end it here!